Peter Gowan’s Theorization of the Forms and Contradictions of US Supremacy: A Critical Assessment Spyros Sakellaropoulos and Panagiotis Sotiris Photo of Peter Gowan © Verso Press Introduction During the past years Peter Gowan emerged as one of the most important writers on international relations from a Marxist perspective and provided one of the most interesting and coherent descriptions of US efforts to establish and maintain a predominant position in the international system. Although he did not often use the notion of imperialism, we believe that he can be considered one of the main Marxist theorists of “new Imperialism.” His death in June 2009 put an early end to a life of political and theoretical commitment. In the following paper we attempt a presentation and critique of Gowan’s main positions. 1. Gowan on the US drive for world dominance 1.1 National interests and political strategies One the main features of Gowan’s interventions was his refusal of traditional theoretical demarcations and his insistence on combining international relations theory with international political economy. Contrary to mainstream globalization theories which tend to underestimate the scale and importance of interstate rivalries and hierarchies Gowan grounded his analysis on a theorization of the national interest Copyright © 2008 by Spyros Sakellaropoulos, Panagiotis Sotiris and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 Spyros Sakellaropoulos and Panagiotis Sotiris 2 as the national capitalist interest (Gowan 1999: 63). This helped him define the national interest of the US as the dominant capitalist state: the US government will ensure the access of American capitals to regions of market growth, dynamic pools of labour and product markets, the creation of suitable institutions and the prevention of exclusion from major markets (Gowan 1999: 69). But Gowan also provided very interesting analyses of the political strategies articulated by the American state in order to defend the interests of US capitalism and secure American supremacy. According to Gowan the roots of the strategy for American global dominance in the international capitalist world can be found in the manner the American state and political system is designed to serve the interests of the American business class in ways that cannot be found in other social formations (Gowan 2004a: 4). Gowan does not support the conventional wisdom that the American state leadership during the Cold War was the result of the confrontation and polarization with the Soviet bloc and communism. On the contrary he insisted that the US strategy was defined in the end of the 1940s as an aggressive strategy not only to contain the Soviet threat but to create conditions for a positive American World Order: It mounted a huge military challenge to the Soviet bloc, impelling the USSR to adopt the only deterrent option available to it at the time: the threat to overrun Western Europe. This in turn, bound the West European allies, utterly dependent on US strategic nuclear forces, to the United States. (Gowan 2004a: 6) This effort was not centred only on Western Europe. It also led to a system of regional alliances that gave the US the ability to directly influence and command the political strategies and security policies of the other main capitalist centres. This in turn led to the formation of an American protectorate system that covered the capitalist core, with a distinctive “hub-and-spokes” character that dictated that each protectorate’s primary military-political relationship had to be with the United States (Gowan 2002: 2). This American strategy was not only a political-military one, but it also had a social substance (Gowan 2004a: 8): the defence of intensive “fordist” capital accumulation against social unrest and labour militancy, the unfettered access of American business interests (and the American governmental and non- Copyright © 2008 by Spyros Sakellaropoulos, Panagiotis Sotiris and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 Spyros Sakellaropoulos and Panagiotis Sotiris 3 governmental organizations designed to promote American business interests) to all the main centres of accumulation, and the preservation of American control over the international monetary systems and American dominance in “high tech” fields (Gowan 2002: 6). 1.2 The “Dollar-Wall Street Regime” American strategy came under severe pressure during the 1970s because of the international capitalist crisis and the economic challenges posed against the US by the other main capitalist centres. The American answer to this was two-fold according to Gowan. On the one hand we had the Reagan Administration’s effort for an offensive strategy against labour and social rights and the implementation of an aggressive strategy for capitalist accumulation. Capitalist classes were offered the prospect of enriching themselves domestically through this turn, as rentiers cashing in on the privatization or pillage of state assets and as employers cracking down on trade unions etc. And the restrictions on the international movement of capitalist property – the system of capital controls – would also be scrapped, giving capital the power to exit from national jurisdictions, thus strengthening further their domestic power over labour. (Gowan 2002: 7) On the other hand we had what Gowan described as the “Dollar-Wall Street Regime.” This is the policy adopted by successive American administrations from the 1970s on, in order to retain the hegemonic position of American capital in the International monetary system. According to Gowan the “financial repression” that characterized the Bretton Woods Regime was abandoned by the Nixon Administration, who wanted to “break out of a set of institutionalized arrangements which limited US dominance in international monetary politics in order to establish a new regime which would give it monocratic power over international monetary affairs” (Gowan 1999: 19). This was not just an economic policy choice but also an effort to increase the political power of the American state since the dollar seigniorage offered the American government a potential political instrument. This turn was intensified during the Reagan administration, when money capital was given precedence as far as policy was concerned, and the US initiated a drive towards the Copyright © 2008 by Spyros Sakellaropoulos, Panagiotis Sotiris and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 Spyros Sakellaropoulos and Panagiotis Sotiris 4 elimination of capital controls, something that facilitated internationalization of American finance capital. According to Gowan the Clinton administration, in its effort to secure American post-cold war predominance, gave particular emphasis to economic statecraft. Although articulated in terms of “globalization,” it was in fact a drive to open borders to US goods, capital and services. Since the US could not keep its predominant position through direct coercion and subordination, it had to “achieve its goal . through the existing dominant social class within [other nation states]” (Gowan 1999: 81). Globalization is described as an aggressive political effort of the US to radically transform the economies of the rest of the world in directions converging with the interests and needs of US capitalism (Gowan 2000: 24). But there were also contradictions arising, especially because of the tremendous expansion of financial capital activities that could result to new vulnerabilities for the US economy: “this expanded political freedom to manipulate the world economy for US economic advantage has ended by deeply distorting the US economy itself, making it far more vulnerable than ever before to forces it cannot fully control” (Gowan 1999: 23). This strategy reflected the changing nature of capitalist accumulation within the US economy. According to Gowan we can talk about a bifurcation of American Capitalism (Gowan 2004a) because of the growing importance of American transnational capitalists in relation to American domestic market forces. Gowan rejected the globalization theorists’ claim that transnational capitalists break with their “territorial state.” On the contrary, he insisted that this fraction of the American bourgeoisie has more or less exercised control on the American state: [T]he relation between American transnational capitalists and the American state remains that of robust, mutual loyalty. One key empirical test of this would surely be to see whether this (dominant) wing of the American capitalist class has worked to build new, supranational institutions for enforcing their property rights internationally, over and above the American state. There is not the slightest evidence of this. Another would be to see whether the American state has worked to penalize the transnational expansion of American capitals. Again, no evidence of this exists. (Gowan 2004a: 15) Copyright © 2008 by Spyros Sakellaropoulos, Panagiotis Sotiris and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 Spyros Sakellaropoulos and Panagiotis Sotiris 5 The rise of the transnational sector of the American capitalist class also led to a rising importance of the financial sector. At the same time the domestic American economy went through a phase of de-industrialization and the mass restructuring efforts of the 1970s and the 1980s did not result in a revitalization of American industry. This financialization of the American economy led to the emergence of a rentier-like capitalist class that provided the main social basis for the “Dollar-Wall Street Regime.” This American strategy offered the other